


Remember what you’re staring at is me

by shieldivarius



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: (i hate the canon timeline), Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, Canon Divergence, Character death (but it's canon), Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, M/M, Pining, Set mid-KH3, Sexual Content, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unrequited Love, fall from grace, technically re:mind compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2020-12-16 03:27:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21029486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldivarius/pseuds/shieldivarius
Summary: Mere days before the final showdown, Riku witnesses Sora and Kairi sharing a paopu on the island where the three of them used to play. While they’re entwined, a stranger, wearing Sora’s face and carrying the heartbroken Riku’s deepest secret, arrives and makes Riku question if his grasp on his darkness is really as good as he thought it was.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is dark and occasionally vulgar, and not for everyone. Please be mindful of the tagged warnings going in.
> 
> Title is from Stone Sour's _Through Glass_.

_ Day One — 6 Days to the Graveyard_

“I’m not done yet. Got one last thing to see through.”

Riku reflected on that as he stared out at the sun sinking into the horizon. One last thing to see through. This evening, on the precipice of the last few years coming to a head… Yeah, he knew something about what that felt like.

He frowned out at the water as he tried to collect his thoughts on the matter. Telling Kairi he needed time to himself hadn’t been a lie, exactly, but truthfully it had just been the easiest way to say that he needed a little bit of space from Sora, just for an hour, without outright coming out and saying it and the awkward repercussions that would’ve brought about.

Maybe thankfully, he’d worked long and hard to build a reputation at home as a loner—only friends with Sora and Kairi—and he’d been gone for so long lately that Kairi had adopted some of that mentality the rest of the island shared. She treated him like a stranger, or at least gave him more space than he was used to from her.

He’d thought he’d be ready when Sora finished his journey to regain his abilities and they met up again. It wasn’t like he hadn’t had this conversation in a million iterations in his head in the time they’d been apart.

But then Sora had shown up to rescue him and the King in the Darkness, once again proving that whether he’d passed the Mark or not, Sora was stronger and more capable than he, Riku, could ever be… And he hadn’t rehearsed how the conversation might go down if he needed Sora to come after him.

He laughed, humourlessly, under his breath and looked from the water up over to the paopu tree where Sora and Kairi sat. He’d gotten the space he wanted, but…

Oh…

The setting sun made Sora and Kairi little more than silhouettes, sitting so closely together on the bent trunk of the paopu tree. While the details of their features were lost to shadow, the halves of the paopu fruit each held might as well have had a spotlight thrown on them for how clear they were.

Riku swallowed hard and tried to look away. He didn’t want to intrude on their moment. But—

Kairi held her half of the fruit up to Sora, and he held his to her in turn. The ocean was quiet this evening and Sora’s laughter floated clear as a bell over to Riku’s ears as he watched, struck numb, unable to look away as the two of them bit into the fruit, and then each finished off their own half.

_“The winner gets to share a paopu fruit with Kairi,”_ he’d joked, messing around before any of this had started because Sora’s crush on Kairi couldn’t have been more obvious.

Because the night before, he’d thrown a paopu fruit at Sora—unaware, at the time, of his own feelings—and felt odd and alienated when Sora had tossed it away almost instantly, like Riku had asked _him_ to share and he’d rejected it out of hand. Because maybe if he kept egging Sora on about his crush, Riku could figure out what Sora liked about her enough to actually share those feelings—make it a real romantic rivalry between them instead of a made up one.

He hadn’t realized—hadn’t let himself realize—that he had feelings for _Sora_ until he’d seen him in a magical sleep and utterly helpless in DiZ’s memory pod. He’d realized those feelings weren’t likely to go away any time soon during his bid to keep Sora safe as possible from a distance while hiding the transmogrification the Darkness had wrought on him.

His heart felt like a vice was pressing down on it, and he forced himself to look away from Sora. Still-warm sand fell through his fingers when he clenched his hands, scrambling for purchase and trying to transfer the pressure in his chest down into the loose grains in his fists so that the squeezing in his chest didn’t break him. But the sand was dry and loose, and anyway he couldn’t claim he hadn’t seen this coming years ago—it shouldn’t hurt him so much to witness it now.

He closed his eyes and tried to focus on being happy for them—everyone was going to expect him to be happiest that his two best friends had finally gotten over themselves and made a move. Everyone was going to be happy that they’d figured it out in enough time to have a moment together, no matter what happened in the coming days. And everyone would pick up on it if Riku displayed anything less than enthusiasm and support for them.

And _dammit_, it wasn’t like he’d really have been able to finally summon up the courage to tell Sora that he was—what, in love with him? That _he_, _Riku_, wanted to share a paopu with him? Right. He’d played that one his his head before.

_“I love you, Sora”_ would get him an enthusiastic _“I love you, too, Riku!”_ because Sora was generous with his feelings.

The clarification of _“I’m_ in _love_ with _you”_ would… probably do nothing other than get him a baffled look while Sora tried desperately to reply without making an awkward moment even more awkward.

Because that was the crux of it, wasn’t it? Sora loved him—as a friend. Best friend, even, and Riku wouldn’t—couldn’t—understate the importance of that relationship to him. He didn’t even think that confessing to Sora would ruin their friendship. _Sora_ would recover and bounce back. But Riku didn’t need to burden him with something he couldn’t do anything about. Sora liked Kairi, and all it would do if Riku confessed was put the undue burden of managing Riku’s emotions on Sora instead of Riku dealing with them alone.

Riku blinked his eyes open, squinted into the brightness of the sun to look back over at Sora.

And instantly regretted it. They’d moved closer while he’d been lost in thought, and maybe he couldn’t make out any details with the sun where it was, but it didn’t take many details for him to infer that they were kissing.

His cheeks went hot and he looked away again, because now he was _definitely_ witnessing something he was sure they’d rather he not. And really, never mind what Sora and Kairi wanted—they knew he was here, didn’t they? Did they forget?—_Riku_ didn’t especially want to sit here and risk seeing them that close any time he glanced over.

He entertained, just for a moment, going close enough to shout something at them about PDA that would be sure to embarrass at least Sora enough that he wouldn’t kiss Kairi in public for at least a couple weeks. A couple years ago he probably would’ve done it. Today…

His eyes burned, the corners prickling, and he bowed his head, stared down at his lap and let a tear drip down his nose. Took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and wiped his hands across his face. Grains of sand transferred from his hands and stuck to the damp spots on his cheeks and he batted away the itchy sensation as he got to his feet. Today he’d give them space, because they deserved it.

They’d all crammed themselves into the same little boat to get from the main island over to the play island, which meant leaving altogether wasn’t an option if he wanted to act like everything was normal. They’d be grumpy at him if he left them here without an easy way back, and he’d just have to come rescue them anyway. It didn’t take much imagination at all for him to picture Sora saying, _“What gives, Riku?”_ and pouting at him on the video screen of a Gummiphone call.

He hopped from the beach up to the path that meandered along the cliff side and pulled himself up onto the deck of the tree house with two easy motions. Everything here had seemed so much larger when they were kids—now he had to duck his head to clear the entrance into the hollowed out old tree.

It was still humid here, but the shade combined with the imminent night allowed the tree house to provide relief from more than just what he was hiding from.

He couldn’t see Sora and Kairi from here. Not if he stood at the back of the hollow, hid himself away like a coward. He put his hand against the back wall, leaned forward and rested his forehead against the roughness. Let out a choked laugh. How could he be a protector of the Light if he couldn’t even face down his own emotions? Maybe _he_ should be one of the backbenchers.

“It’s a nice view, really. I can see what’s got you so enthralled.”

Riku stiffened, turned his head enough to see a masked figure silhouetted in the doorway. The light wasn’t strong enough for him to make out any details, only the outline of the tattered robe, the thick-soled boots. For a wild moment he thought the replica had come back, but the voice was wrong, the height was wrong, the mask, hiding his face and identity from Riku, was wrong.

“Who are you?” he demanded. Back almost against the wall, he turned to face the intruder. He hadn’t heard a dark corridor open—had he come onto the island somewhere else and walked up? Were Sora and Kairi okay? The tree house had been a good place to come and hide but it wasn’t a defensible position. There wasn’t enough room to fight in here, barely even enough room to summon a Keyblade, never mind swing it.

The intruder looked back over his shoulder. “They’re cute, right? So sweet.”

He’d been so worried Sora was fighting and he couldn’t get over there to help that it took him an instant to realize the comment meant that Sora and Kairi were unharmed and, probably, oblivious. Good. They deserved to stay that way.

“Who. Are. You?” Riku repeated.

The mask chuckled, and the sound nagged at the back of Riku’s mind, telling him it should be familiar even though he was pretty sure they’d never met.

“Aw, you don’t recognize me? Really?”

Riku narrowed his eyes, but before he could snap a response the mask spoke again, and this time the malevolence had melted out of his tone.

“That really hurts, Riku.”

_Sora!?_

He froze, unable to get the name out but vaguely aware he stood gaping like a fish. Not possible. It could be Roxas, under Xehanort’s influence—

“Cat got your tongue?”

No, Roxas didn’t sound like that. He had a different voice, didn’t sound pitch-perfectly Sora. So much like Sora, even with darkness colouring his tone again.

The mask took a step into the tree house, a step closer to Riku, and tilted his head to the side.

“You know, I thought you’d be the fun one, but I got way more response outta him.” He hooked a thumb back over his shoulder, indicating Sora again.

Riku narrowed his eyes. “Stay away from them.”

The mask waved a dismissive hand. Took another step closer.

Riku clenched a fist, looked around the tree house again with a quick glance, and debated the risk of trying for an all-out fight in these close quarters. Quickly discarded it again, because the mask was still between him and the doorway and if he sounded like Sora, chances were good he had a Keyblade too—after all, everyone else seemed to these days.

“Don’t worry. I’m not interested in them, or I’d be over there instead. Not that _you’d_ know anything about it.” He looked around, moving his head so the gesture wasn’t lost in his helmet. Could he even see anything through that thing? It was dark enough in here as it was.

“Got yourself a nice little hole to hide in, don’t you?”

Riku clenched his jaw, biting his teeth together to stop from retaliating. Baiting him. He was just baiting him.

“Still no response? _Really?”_ A disgusted noise came from behind the mask.

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

The mask melted away, the helmet followed, and Riku may have already concluded that the face beneath was going to be Sora’s, but that didn’t make it any less startling to see Sora looking back at him through the darkness. No, not looking—sneering was the better way of describing the expression he wore.

The Sora look-a-like held out his hands and posed as though presenting himself. It gave Riku enough time to take in the black hair and yellow eyes that practically glowed in the dim lighting. Not Sora, so clearly not Sora, but—and he hated, hated, _hated_ himself for it—something in the set of his features, the casual smirk that said he enjoyed trying to mess with Riku—the knowledge in his eyes that followed Riku’s every thought—something about him piqued the interest of a dark part of him that Sora could never touch.

Riku squashed that down, ignored it as best he could.

“Your name?”

He grinned. “Sora.”

“Your _real_ name,” Riku said, his jaw still clenched.

The Sora look-a-like shrugged, twist to his lips that said louder than words that he was enjoying denying Riku his identity, so Riku let it drop.

“Whatever. What do you want?” If he was working for Xehanort—and it was a pretty safe bet that he was—then masked-Sora was probably under orders not to do too much a damage, maybe not to pick a fight at all. That gave Riku strategic advantage—or would’ve, if he wasn’t backed into a corner in a tree house he could barely stand up straight in.

“What do _I_ want? Riku, _Riku_…”

Riku’s shoulders tensed, and dread settled into the pit of his stomach, warning him with a niggling, sick feeling that he didn’t want to know what this stranger—impostor—was thinking, didn’t want to know what he really wanted, why he was really here.

“Why, Riku…” Sora’s voice spoke to him again. The sick feeling in Riku’s gut grew, tendrils wrapping around his stomach and squeezing, and he clenched his jaw and stared him down, waiting. Forced himself to maintain the utter non-response that not-Sora had already admitted bothered him so much. “I want _you_.”

His teeth hurt from clenching his jaw, because hadn’t he imagined Sora saying that to him a thousand times? A million? And Sora—_his Sora_, the one in his imagination, not the real one out kissing Kairi on the paopu tree, and not the fake-Sora standing here with black hair in front of him—his Sora always said those words with the most reassuring smile. A smile that said _of course it’s you_.

Not-Sora, whatever else he knew, somehow, about Riku, had missed that memo. He realized, too, that he’d missed something by the expression on his face.

“It’d be so easy, wouldn’t it?”

Riku stared at him, not following, still lost in fantasy-Sora’s smile in his head.

“_They_ would never have to know. Probably wouldn’t even notice.” He leaned back, glanced over his shoulder toward the tree house entrance, but he was already so up in Riku’s space that he couldn’t possibly see any more of Sora and Kairi than Riku could from here. “They were pretty busy with, you know, _each other_.”

Riku made a face but couldn’t deny it.

Not-Sora took a step closer, close enough that Riku could feel the wash of the power radiating from him, could feel the tendrils of darkness slipping out from him even if they weren’t manifesting. Riku forced himself to look up, look at not-Sora in the eye, and got the impression of lashes thick as Sora’s framing those mockingly amused gold eyes.

Not-Sora smirked, broke eye contact and leaned in. His hand, gloved, brushed Riku’s, and when he spoke, inches from Riku’s ear, it was in Sora’s voice again. “I could be Sora. Just for you, Riku. Wouldn’t that be… nice?”

Sora’s voice so close to his ear, the unshakable impression of familiarity… Riku shuddered, the reaction quickly followed by anger at himself. He brought his hands up and pushed out to drive not-Sora away—

But he’d already retreated to the tree house entrance, laughing low through a smirk.

“Get off my world,” Riku said, jaw clenched tight. Shame that not-Sora had gotten even that small reaction from him churned Riku’s gut.

Not-Sora laughed, his laugh a cackling thing so far out from Sora’s that it was almost amazing his voice could share anything with Sora’s the rest of the time.

“You’ll come around,” he said, then vanished into a dark corridor before Riku could summon up a retort.

Riku stared at the spot where he’d disappeared for a moment, getting his bearings back—catching his breath, though he didn’t know how he could’ve gotten so winded just standing still—and clenching and unclenching his fists. How had he known? How could he know Riku’s deepest, most close-held secret?

“Riiikuuu!”

Sora. Looking for him. Riku froze, his shoulders tense as weird, uncomfortable—_uncomfortably familiar_—unease seeped into him and mixed itself up with the shame the mask had left in his wake. The desperate need to hide himself from Sora wasn’t new, but it hadn’t reared its ugly head since he’d gotten control of his struggle with the darkness.

“Riku?”

_Dammit_. He was a _Keyblade Master_. A _Keyblade Master_ hiding up in a little kids’ tree house from his two best friends. And why? Because they’d found happiness in the middle of a war? How juvenile could he get?

“Rikuuu?” Sora’s voice had grown further away. That gave Riku a few moments longer to come up with a good deflection from his disappearance.

Putting not-Sora’s appearance and proposition behind him, leaving them in the shadows of the tree house where they belonged, Riku ducked out of the entrance and stepped back out onto the winding wooden deck outside.

The moon hung high and full in the sky, and cast highlights on Sora running across the beach.

“Hey, you finally ready to go?” he called down through silence broken only by the gentle lap of the waves on the beach. That sound, that peaceful, familiar sound, drove some of the tension from Riku’s spine.

Sora stopped in his tracks, turned, and looked up toward him. “What’re you doing way up there? You ready to go back? Kairi’s on the dock already.”

Riku hopped down from the deck, then from the path, and joined Sora—Sora, who was already moving toward the dock—on the beach. Maybe he didn’t have to come up with an excuse after all—guess they didn’t care where he’d gotten off to.

He shoved that thought aside as they reached the boat, where Kairi was already seated on one of the benches. It was better for all of them if he didn’t have to explain, anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

_Day Two — 5 Days to the Graveyard_

A confused jumble of dreams, each of them more real than the last, kept him from feeling like he got much sleep at all that night. He hadn’t mentioned the mask’s appearance the night before; it didn’t seem right to worry Sora and Kairi when he hadn’t done anything but taunt Riku about something _very specific_. Something _very specific_ that Riku certainly didn’t have any desire to talk about with the other two.

His face went hot at the thought and he refocused on the repetitive motions of swinging Braveheart in forms through the air. Today’s plan, and indeed, the plan for the next few days, was to train and rest, and make sure they were ready to meet Xehanort at the end. Riku couldn’t afford to be distracted, and he knew—_knew_—that distraction, above all other things, had been not-Sora’s goal the day before.

_Braveheart._

What a laugh that a Keyblade with a name like that would come to him. To him, _Riku_, who hadn’t managed to summon up the ability to be happy for Sora and Kairi yet. Who thought he might choke on the lump in his throat every time the image of them sitting locked together, silhouetted by the sunset, rose to the forefront of his mind.

He chanced a glance down the beach to where the two were sparring. Sora kept his blade steady, his stance sure, even as he pulled his swings and parried gently against Kairi’s own. Riku could tell even from way back here how much Sora was holding back—could Kairi?

She lunged, leaving her side open, and Sora tapped her lightly with the flat of his Keyblade. Her dismayed, frustrated “_No!_” at getting tapped out carried down the beach. She hadn’t had enough training time, wasn’t ready. But then, were any of them?

Sora jumped forward to offer pointers, his voice low enough that Riku couldn’t make out the words, but his expression so gentle that his tone, even if inaudible, was clear.

A flash of worry crossed Riku’s mind, the image of Kairi getting herself into a tight spot and Sora leaping to defend her, quick as he’d leaped to offer her pointers, roiling Riku’s stomach. Sora was tough, but if he was distracted looking out for Kairi—for any of them—his concentration divided…

Riku tore his attention away from them and focused on the weight of the Keyblade in his hand. Thrust, slash, slash. Pivot, cut, thrust. Repeat. The familiar motions, and the freedom of performing them in safety, let him fall into near meditation, easing his mind and the nerves wracking his stomach—

At least until Sora’s burst of laughter came down the beach. Riku turned to find him lying in the sand, flat on his back with Kairi holding Destiny’s Embrace pointed at his chest.

“Give up! I got you!”

Sora laughed again, and through his laughter—free, joyous, uncontrolled and unashamed of laying sprawled on the beach—said something to Kairi that Riku couldn’t make out. Whatever it was, Kairi’s entire body betrayed the eye roll she gave in response. She lowered her Keyblade to her side and Sora hopped to his feet.

He turned and waved down the beach at Riku, then ran over. “Kairi and I’re gonna go practise on the obstacle course.” Sora kind of gestured over his shoulder, to the other side of the play island where they used to race. “D’you, uh…” He trailed off, and it was crystal clear to Riku that they were _not_ going to go and race, and that Sora very much did _not_ want him to tag along.

So he shrugged and played off the aborted invitation as though it hadn’t happened at all. “If you guys take too long, I’m taking the boat back on my own and leaving you here.” He laughed at the end of it, at the expression on Sora’s face, and to make it clear that he meant it as a joke. Mostly.

Sora’s answering grin was shy, but relieved at Riku’s understanding. “Don’t worry! We’ll be back in time!”

Then he ran off, collecting Kairi as he went. The two of them held hands as they left Riku’s sight and he sighed, letting his shoulders fall, his posture crumple a little. Growing up it had been the three of them, doing everything together all of the time. Planning on leaving the islands, seeing what lay beyond the horizon, what awaited them where the ocean ended.

It hadn’t been the three of them since Destiny Islands had fallen to darkness, and Riku with it. Not really. But it wasn’t until now, seeing them together—happily together—without him that he really felt that bond had been broken.

Riku frowned, hating the train of thought and trying to chase it away by focusing back on his Keyblade forms. Thrust, slash, slash. Pivo—

“What do _you_ want?”

Helmet still off, just like last night, the mask—dark Sora? No, that was weird—stood on the dock. In the daylight there was no doubt that he looked as identical to Sora as he’d seemed the night before. That both frustrated and relieved Riku, who’d been worried he might’ve been projecting that they looked similar. But no, maybe his hair was black, and his eyes the soulless gold of someone who’d gotten too close to the darkness for too long, but he still looked like Sora.

That he’d shown up on the island again, to Riku when he was alone and twice in two days, was too much to be a coincidence. Embarrassment began to curl in Riku’s stomach as memories of the previous night’s interaction came forward. He pushed them away.

“Why are you watching me?”

The mask smirked, and disappeared and reappeared through a dark corridor so fast it looked like he’d phased straight through the air down to the beach in front of Riku.

Leery, Riku shifted a step back and raised his Keyblade.

“Oh, come on,” the mask said. “I think I made that pretty clear yesterday. Are you that bad of a listener?”

Riku scowled, refusing to take the bait and think about their encounter the night before. In the daylight it was easier. He may have looked more like Sora, but there was no darkness to hide that he wasn’t. Not like there had been in the tree house. Still… In daylight the cockiness that had been in the mask’s voice was clear in his eyes, too, and there was no fear, not even wariness, that Riku had a blade trained on him.

“Get out of here, or I’ll make you,” Riku said.

The mask grinned, showing teeth.

“That sounds fun,” he said, and he wasn’t trying to sound like Sora today. He shifted to mimic Riku’s stance, summoning a Keyblade to his hand as he raised his arm above his head. Riku glanced at it long enough to be mollified that it didn’t resemble any of Sora’s Keychains. At least something couldn’t be copied.

Then he was defending, Keyblade raised, knees bent against the force of the mask’s blow. Riku hadn’t seen him move, hadn’t even seen evidence he’d slid through a dark corridor to cross the space remaining between them. Missed him moving again when he blinked.

Riku spun, scanned the beach with a careful eye. Tried to feel for the disruption of space that would suggest a dark corridor opening nearby. He spied the patch of darkness skimming across the sand as if below it, but not disrupting the grains, before he could detect it. He leaped out of the way as the mask reemerged nearly beneath him. Swung his Keyblade in an arc that the mask parried with a clank of metal.

Riku leaped back, clear of the clash. This time he watched the mask vanish, felt the softest ruffle of the air being disturbed, and managed to throw a barrier spell up just as the mask reappeared and slashed down.

The mask recoiled, smirked, and cartwheeled away.

Riku chased after him, Keyblade held high. But the mask laughed, lowered his Keyblade, fired a hot blast of magic out of the end. Large and speeding toward him, it had almost reached Riku and the flat of his guarded blade when it split into half a dozen smaller fireballs. Heat blazed on the back of his neck, stopped inches away from scorching skin by his last-second barrier.

When he dropped the shield again, the mask had vanished from view.

“Get back here! Coward!”

Concern that he’d gone after Sora and Kairi forefront in his mind, Riku took off down the beach toward the other side of the island.

Laughter came from behind him, sent him skidding in the sand when he stopped in his tracks and pivoted around.

“Keep up!”

Riku scowled, threw a spell and chased it back across the beach. The mask vanished from its path.

He reappeared above Riku, but this time Riku was ready with his blade raised. He caught the opposing blade in a parry on the way down.

“That all you got? Two moves?” Riku demanded.

The mask laughed. “Oh, come on, Riku. I’m only playing. If this was a real fight, you’d know.”

He slid his Keyblade along Braveheart’s smooth edge, then twisted his hand. Riku’s wrist bent, grip pulled off balance with the askew blade. The mask stepped forward, pressed in close to Riku. Their blades crossed between them, Braveheart’s edge caught between a jut in the mask’s Keyblade and the large gear on the end. Riku looked up and pulled at the blade, but it was locked tight, firmly caught by the mask and the sure grip he had on his own blade.

Riku gnashed his teeth and tugged Braveheart’s hilt again, trying at least to step back. But the mask had full control over both blades, had gotten the edge of his Keyblade into one of Braveheart’s notches, and only pressed forward again, locking them more solidly together, when he tried.

The mask laughed. “Aren’t you having fun? You don’t want to get away from me that badly, do you?”

Their blades were still crossed, locked together solidly but nearly vertical between them now, the guards so close he could almost reach out and grab the mask’s to get the blade away from him. The mask tutted as though he knew what Riku was thinking. “My face is up here,” he said. “Remember? The one who looks _so_ much like your—” he paused to laugh “—_very_ taken, _very_ not into you ‘best friend.’”

Riku’s face went hot. Was it really so obvious he was in love with Sora?

The mask’s expression turned gleeful and he laughed. “You know…” He smiled, nothing like Sora even if they shared a face. Too jaded, too cynical, too cruel. He shifted, and somehow was suddenly _there_, closer, stance shifted without moving their blades at all. He got one of his feet in between Riku’s and leaned in, around the blades.

Riku recoiled. The mask let out a bark of laughter and a moment later Braveheart was free in his hand, the mask having wrenched his own Keyblade free of the tangle. The lack of resistance sent Riku off balance and he reeled for a moment. The mask took the momentary blip in his defence to smack him across the chest with the flat of his Keyblade.

Winded, Riku landed on his back in the sand. Braveheart rested just beyond his fingertips, then vanished when the mask looked its way.

“You know,” the mask said again. He moved into Riku’s line of view and stepped over him so that he stood, one foot on either side of his stomach, looking right down at him. He held his Keyblade with a limp arm, casual posture, but pointed steadily at Riku’s throat in a way that was anything but lackadaisical. “I meant it.”

He shifted his Keyblade, leaned onto it as though it were a cane and pressed the tip into the sand. Crouched down enough that Riku could feel the ends of the tattered bits of his robe lying against his shirt and pants.

The mask reached out his free hand as though he was going to touch Riku’s shoulder, then withdrew it.

“I could be Sora, just for you. Only for you. No competition.” His voice slipped into Sora’s again as he spoke.

“Because I love you too, Riku.”

Fighting not to give him a reaction made Riku squeeze his eyes shut in spite of his vulnerable position. He clenched his fists and when he opened his eyes again, found the mask unmoved above him.

“Damn you,” he said, mouth dry as though the sand had gotten there and taken away both the moisture and his ability to spit words that were any stronger. “You’re not Sora!”

The mask smirked.

“No. But I’m the closest thing you’re ever going to get.”

That was true, and he knew it, so why did it feel like a punch to the gut to have to hear it aloud? He should be angry at the taunting, should jump to his feet and demand that this impostor get off his island and stop using his friend’s face. Cold shame writhed in his gut instead, making his stomach turn and nausea rise. If the enemy knew, if he’d been so obvious about his feelings… Did _Sora_ know? That he might’ve been wearing his heart on his sleeve all these years hadn’t crossed his mind, not until now, and he stared right through the boy above him, horrified, until fingers snapped in his face.

“You still with me?” The mask sounded bored. His leaning pose on his Keyblade had grown slouched and lazy. Easy to topple and get the upper hand, even from Riku’s prone angle. But Riku didn’t move.

“Your name. What is it, really?”

The mask perked up and looked down at Riku like he’d done something interesting. “I told you to call me Sora.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Riku said. If he wasn’t misreading the expression on the mask’s face—and he didn’t think he was, because it was an expression he shared with Sora—then Riku had piqued his interest enough that he might actually get answers out of him. Or this answer, at least. “You can try and sound like him all you want, but you’re not Sora. So, who are you?”

The interested expression shifted to narrowed eyes, the mask cottoning on faster than Sora ever would that Riku might be up to something.

“Why?”

Riku may have been the one in the prone position, but the current of the conversation had changed. Riku didn’t want to feel too comfortable in assuming he had the upper hand, not when he wasn’t the one armed and not when the mask had already proven himself a more-than-capable opponent. But with the mask entertaining his questions, Riku at least knew the imminent threat of danger had passed, Keyblade out or no. Riku pulled out whatever bravado he had left, forcing it out as a defence in front of the squeamish, uncertain embarrassment still sloshing around in his chest.

“You’re coming onto me awfully hard. I think that earns me a name.”

The mask narrowed his eyes.

Then he smirked, as though he’d won, and Riku’s bravado retreated, concern that he’d been manipulated without realizing bubbling up in its place.

“Vanitas. _That's_ my name.”

Vanitas.

Yeah, that suited him a lot more than “Sora” did.

Vanitas kept staring down at him. Then he straightened up and pointed his Keyblade at Riku’s throat again. Riku stayed still, waited to see what he would do, and forced his fingers not to twitch. Keyblade reflexes were a funny thing, and he could feel Braveheart waiting to be summoned, just out of reach. The slightest movement of his hand would call the blade to him right now, and he didn’t have any intention of pushing things that far unless he needed to.

“Say it,” Vanitas said. “My name. Say it.”

“Vanitas.”

Vanitas’s mouth twisted as though he wasn’t sure if he liked how his name sounded in Riku’s voice. He remained standing over Riku, looking contemplative, and more than a little disgusted, though at what Riku couldn’t quite figure out.

Riku raised his eyebrows. “You going to let me up, Vanitas?” he asked, and made sure that when he repeated the name it was in the same tone.

Vanitas tilted his head. The disgusted look faded a little. “Maybe. I like how you look underneath me. Looking up at me.” His tone was low, menacing, confident. Playful, even, but in a suggestive, dark way.

Riku shifted his hips, trying to hide his reaction to that voice. Vanitas’s smirk suggested he wasn’t successful, and Riku felt his cheeks start to grow hot again. “Yeah, well,” Riku said. “I’ve had enough.”

He’d scarcely called Braveheart when Vanitas phased away. He reappeared back on the dock with his Keyblade held across his body like he’d expected Riku to follow and resume their fight.

Riku got to his feet instead, keeping his motions slow and measured, Braveheart down by his side. “You ready for round two?” He gave the blade an easy swing in front of him as he spoke.

But Vanitas was looking past him, back toward the other side of the island. Not willing to give him his back, Riku didn’t turn, but he angled his head a little to see if he could hear if Sora and Kairi were on their way back.

The thought of them showing up while Vanitas was still here, and the secrets he could reveal, made Riku’s stomach clench.

“I’ll pass,” Vanitas said. Then he smiled, a knowing, sly look in his eye. “But I don’t think you’ve ‘had enough’ at all.” He glanced at Riku, head-to-toe, leering and a little too lingering on the way down. “So I’ll be back for ‘round two’ of _this_—” He made a suggestive gesture connecting them. “—ah, _soon_.” He smirked.

“Because don’t forget, Riku,” he said. And Riku knew it was coming when his expression went softer, more Sora-like again, “I _looove_ you.” Vanitas’s Sora voice only lasted through the last vowel before he dissolved into laughter.

He vanished into a dark corridor, leaving Riku alone on the beach with his thoughts, and a dawning feeling of dread.

He was in love with Sora. But…

_No._ He couldn’t—

Other feelings, much darker and more lustful feelings, had latched onto the image of Vanitas in his mind. And while he might’ve been relieved that Vanitas had taken off before Sora and Kairi could see him, there was some quiet little part of him that wanted to hold him to his assertion that he’d show up again.

And that… Riku stared down at the sand beneath his feet, glanced at Braveheart’s blade, looked at the toes of his boots. Tried to purge the feeling of Vanitas crouched over him, so close he was practically sitting, from his memory.

How else was he supposed to deal with these feelings, if not pushing them away?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NB: Consent issues warned for in the tags become relevant in this chapter.

_ Days Three and Four _

_ 4 Days to the Graveyard _

The responsible part of Riku, the part that would answer to Master if anyone called him that, wanted to tell someone—Sora, Mickey, _ someone _—that one of Xehanort’s goons was creeping around the island. That he looked like Sora. That maybe the existence of such a person was an issue they needed to address. 

The rest of him wanted to curl up in shame at the mere thought of how much Vanitas knew. How he’d reacted. The dark places his thoughts started going when he thought about Vanitas.

Desperately feeling that he needed more space, not less, after the previous day’s encounter, he’d prepared a load of excuses for keeping away from Sora and Kairi during that day’s preparations. He didn’t end up needing to use any of them. They were supposed to be making sure the Gummi ship was loaded and ready for the flight through the Ocean Between to the Keyblade Graveyard, but at ten that morning Sora and Kairi had darted out with a promise to be back later, and he hadn’t seen them since.

So it was a leery Riku who checked the Meteor and Firaga cannons, the shields and the parabolic radar, not clear how this task had been left to him when Sora was so much more familiar with the vehicle. The proper procedure for making sure everything was in top shape should’ve been to take it to Disney Castle or Radiant Garden and get someone who knew Gummis to take a look at it, nose to thrusters—not to have Riku poking around it himself. He looked over his shoulder with every step, worried that Vanitas would show up for another round. At least if Sora or Kairi had been around he wouldn’t have to worry about _ that _. Vanitas didn’t seem to want them to know he’d been by.

But Vanitas didn’t show up, and neither did Sora or Kairi. 

Late in the afternoon, after he’d finished the last task on his list—restocking the small first aid kit in the back of the ship—and Sora and Kairi still hadn’t reappeared, Riku finally went looking for them. He rowed out to the play island first and checked the usual spots there: the paopu tree, the obstacle course, the observation deck. Even the tree house despite the dread that set into him when he neared it, the guilt that struck him when he glanced at it, and the secret place, despite the shudder that wracked his spine when he approached the carved wood panel inside. 

Worry spiking when none of those places, or any of their favourite hangouts around town, turned up any sign of them, Riku checked his Gummiphone, hoping for a message. 

Nothing there, but when he tabbed over to the shared photo feed there they were, faces filling the frame, laughing, the sun setting behind them. He couldn’t tell where the photo had been taken, maybe along the rocks at the edge of town, but the timestamp read minutes before.

Riku’s heart sank, even as he tried to summon up amusement for how Sora had hardly managed to get any of his hair in the frame, how his great big grin seemed to spread from ear to ear like he didn’t have a care in the world. But his eyes kept straying down the frame, his mind turning in knots trying to figure out how Kairi was at that angle. Eventually he realized that she had to be sitting on Sora’s lap, or at least pressed so close to him that she might as well have been.

_ Be happy for them. _

He tapped the comments line down below, typed ‘You guys are cute’, and sent it before he could second guess whether his comment sent another message entirely. Then, satisfied they were safe, even if he didn’t know where they were, he made his way home.

Unable to sleep that night, Riku stared up at the ceiling. His bedroom window sat ajar, letting in the sounds of the night sea crashing against the shoreline. He closed his eyes and let the sound rush over him, imagined he lay on the beach with each wave spilling and breaking over him, threatening to drag him back out to sea with it as it ebbed. 

Here, alone in the dark, picturing the waves washing him away, Riku let in the loneliness that had been darkening his vision since… well, since he’d seen Sora and Kairi share that paopu fruit. Loneliness that didn’t stem merely from the knowledge that Sora returning his feelings was and would always be an impossible position. It was more than that, greater than that. 

They were supposed to be getting ready for the end together. The three of them. Together. Not Sora and Kairi off doing who-knew-what with Riku left on his own. Anything could happen in the coming days, and this… This felt like a premeditation to mourning. He _ couldn’t _ lose Sora and Kairi. He _ wouldn’t. _Not if he could control it in any way whatsoever. 

They were supposed to be together. Wasn’t that what they’d been fighting for? 

Riku rolled over, shook off his blankets and the suffocating feeling of being compressed beneath them. The spell of the waves broken, he looked across at the window, the pane beneath the half-closed sash bright with the high-hung moon. 

_ Be happy for them _.

He was. _ He was _.

He…

Well, it was easier said than done.

_ 3 Days to the Graveyard _

The next day went much the same as the one before, with Sora and Kairi nowhere to be found but posting on their phones frequently enough, and from different parts of the island, that Riku didn’t think anything was amiss. He checked the feed constantly, refreshing even when Sora or Kairi had posted a new picture moments before, and trying, at least after his first initial instant reactions, to wait at least a few minutes before tapping the little heart symbol above the picture to show he’d seen it. He didn’t leave any comments after the first one. That would be too weird.

The day dragged on, Riku able to find less and less to keep him occupied and wishing all the while that Sora and Kairi would come back. He didn’t go looking for them again—they knew where he was and clearly didn’t want to be found. But it was tempting, and he kept hoping, in between phone checks, something else might come up for him to do. He even, for a moment when he glanced across the water, thought he saw Vanitas hiding in an odd shadow. His breath caught, heart jumped, thinking that he might get a bit of entertainment there—before the sun came out from behind the cloud that had blocked it and revealed nothing in the spot. 

He shook his head harshly after that, shucked his shirt and went for a dip in the water off the main beach. The shallows were too warm to be refreshing but he kicked out deeper, far beyond where he could comfortably touch bottom, and dove down into the cooler water below the warmed surface. There he drifted until his breath ran out and he had to surface again. He floated, alternating between lying on his back and treading water, until a rowboat with a set of familiar heads crossed by, headed out to the play island.

“_ Hey! _” he shouted. Futile, of course, the water swallowed his voice, but the reaction had been more automatic than actually meant to get Sora and Kairi’s attention. Riku turned and, maybe splashing a little more than necessary, swam back to shore and gathered up his shirt before grabbing his own boat and rowing out to the island after them.

He docked in the slip and, pausing only long enough to tie the boat up once he’d leaped out, hopped down onto the sand and ran across the beach. He could see Sora and Kairi sitting on the paopu tree again, and damn their privacy, he’d given them enough space.

“Hey, what gives?” he called over once he was sure he was in earshot. 

Sora startled, arms flying out to the side and flailing for an instant before he caught his balance, one hand on the tree beside him and one grabbing onto Kairi’s arm. He jumped down from the tree and ran out to the middle of the bridge spanning the shack and the smaller island.

“Riku!” Sora beamed, his eyes bright and clear as the sky behind him, and stepped off the bridge. He landed neatly in front of Riku, knees bent and feet creating divots in the sand. “Hi!”

Riku was vaguely aware of footsteps above him, Kairi coming to join them, but Sora, standing in front of him, grinning and all-but radiating light through his smile alone, demanded all of his attention. He looked so… _ delighted _ to see Riku, like he’d missed Riku as much over the last day and a half as Riku had missed hanging around with him. Not true, of course—Sora and Kairi had both looked plenty happy and not at all like they thought they needed someone third-wheeling on them in all of the pictures they’d been posting—but the complaint over being left behind that Riku had been holding onto since seeing them row over here died on his tongue. 

“Uh, hi,” he said instead. Awkward, lame, stupid. “You guys feeling ready?” 

“You bet!” Sora said, then peered up at him and for one long, dreaded moment looked so serious Riku worried about what was coming. Then his lips twitched into a cocky little grin and he leaned back with his hands behind his head, elbows framing his face, surety seeping from him. “Kairi doesn’t think I could beat you in a fight.” 

Riku snorted. That was all? “You can’t, unless I let you.” They’d been talking about him? Was that better or worse than being left behind and forgotten about? His peaking anxiety couldn’t decide.

Kairi appeared next to them, having taken the stairs through the shack to get down to the beach instead of the much shorter jumping-off-the-bridge route. “That’s not exactly what I said, anyway.” She elbowed Sora in the side. “I _ said _ that the original should always be more formidable than any copies. There was _ context _, Sora.”

Riku looked askance at her, trying to catch up. “Copies? You mean…” he trailed off, because it sounded like maybe they actually _ had _ been preparing, at least somewhat, when he’d thought they were off messing around the whole time.

Kairi lifted a shoulder. “You know, like the replicas.” She looked him over, then patted him on the arm. “But we have the Riku with the good hair.”

He raised a hand to his head. “Huh? What’s wrong with my hair?”

“Nothing.” She grinned at him. “Anymore.”

Feeling a little self-conscious and tugging at the back of his recently short-shorn hair with one hand, Riku looked on, baffled. Sora made a dismayed noise. “C’mon, lay off him, Kairi.”

“I’m just teasing,” she said, as some desperate part of Riku preened under Sora coming to his defence, however minor. “I like the new haircut, Riku.”

His muttered ‘thanks’ was lost under Sora catching up to the conversation. “Hey! What do you mean, I can’t beat you? Sure I can!”

He and Kairi both turned to give Sora a sceptical look. 

“What?! I can! I’ll show you!” Pouting, Sora swivelled his head to look back and forth between him and Kairi. The Kingdom Key flashed into his hand in a burst of light, his pout flashing just as quickly to a bright grin. “You’re on, Riku!”

Kairi giggled and turned back to Riku. “What do you say? I’ll referee!”

“I don’t think…” Riku trailed off, caught in the brilliance of that smile turned on him again. The corners of his lips slid up in response, powerless to resist smiling back at Sora. But he forced himself to continue anyway. “I don’t think…” 

The image of another boy with Sora’s face floated across Riku’s vision, his smirk superimposing itself across Sora’s smile, goading expression covering up Sora’s earnest, eager one. He didn’t _ have _a good reason not to spar with Sora—no good reason other than so recently being pinned down by Vanitas on this very beach and the way his body had reacted then.

“Huh? Riku?” Sora’s grin faded a little at the corners. “Hellooo? Riku?” 

Riku tugged at his hair again, used the pressure to shake off the memory of Vanitas crouched over him. Met Sora’s so-bright eyes. He looked confused, and maybe a little worried, and Riku called up all his old bravado—bravado that felt uncomfortable now, like an old favourite shirt that he’d grown out of—and matched Sora’s fading cockiness with his own.

“Alright,” he said, and summoned Braveheart to his hand. It resonated in his grip, its energy spreading out in a warm wave from the hilt and up through his arm. “But when you lose, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Riku’s words reignited the fading embers of Sora’s smile.

“I can take you!” Sora said, and ran a short distance down the beach. He turned back to face Riku, dropping himself into an alert, battle-ready stance with his Keyblade held low. Kairi followed, stopped at a point halfway between them and held her hand straight out between them, and a pang of nostalgia struck Riku at the familiarity. He and Sora, ready to compete over something inane, and Kairi ready to officiate any and all contests they’d managed to cook up. 

“Ready?” Kairi asked, looking back and forth between them. 

“Yup!” Sora called out. Riku raised his Keyblade aloft and tried to focus on Sora’s excited energy instead of studying how differently he stood from Vanitas. He took a deep breath, let the sea air settle into his lungs, tried to let the scents of childhood relax him. This was Sora and Kairi. He didn’t have to think about anyone else.

“Go!” 

Sora darted forward, closed the gap between them with a lunge and Riku brought his blade down to parry the initial thrust, responding with one of his own. They were, really, equally matched in this low-stakes game. No magic or enhanced Keyblade techniques, just the two of them swinging back and forth, sparring the same way they had as kids with toy swords. 

Even the weight of Braveheart, so much heavier than any toy sword had ever been—so much heavier than Way to the Dawn had been, for that matter, and requiring such a different technique than the lighter Keyblade—faded to nothing as he and Sora danced back and forth along the beach, flipping between offence and defence in equal measures. Sora wore a grin the entire time, looked like he was having the time of his life, and Riku found himself responding in kind. 

Kairi disappeared, the beach disappeared, everything reduced to him and Sora and their Keyblades meeting in a clash of steel on steel.

Still they continued, neither getting the upper hand, and it was so easy to let his memory of tangling with Vanitas fade into the back of his mind because Sora fought nothing like him—at least until Sora parried on an angle Riku hadn’t been expecting, and Braveheart briefly got caught against the crown-shaped notch at the end of his Keyblade. Sora twisted and let him go, but too late—Riku’s mind rushed back to the present, and he pushed back, taking two quick swings that made Sora jump and stumble to get out of the way.

A third strong cross-swing to finish out the combo made Sora fall back into the sand with a shouted _ “Oof!” _ Riku stepped forward and held his blade over him. 

“Got you,” he said, as Sora blinked up at him, limbs splayed out in a starfish. His Keyblade lay in the sand next to him, his hand resting atop the hilt but not grasping it. He was breathing heavily, still smiling though he looked a little frustrated by his loss, and his pupils darted around like he was trying to figure out if he could jump back to his feet and get back the upper hand. Riku lowered the tip of Braveheart closer to dissuade him of the thought, and tried not to think about the reversal of Vanitas standing over him from before.

If he crouched over Sora, would he have the same reaction to Riku that Riku had had to Vanitas?

Heat prickled along Riku’s skin, the thought of it—the wholly preposterous thought of him pinning Sora down on the beach the way Vanitas had pinned him—rushing through him and bringing dark thoughts along with it. His daydreams of Sora—the Sora in his fantasies that returned his feelings—had rarely dared go down this path before, and had _ definitely _ never gone there with Sora present and in front of him, looking up at him with a flushed, sweat-damp face fresh from sparring. 

“Riku wins!”

Riku fought off the blush threatening to overwhelm him and dropped his arm, turning away as soon as Kairi spoke. He banished Braveheart and faced the main island, looking out over the water and trying to get himself under control. “I think I’m done for the day,” he said. “We should rest while we can.”

More than that, he needed to get home and get himself into a cold shower. Needed to wash off the sand, the sweat, the very real fear that Vanitas’s darkness held more of an allure and had made more of an impression than he was willing to consciously acknowledge. 

“Aw, man!” Sora said. He sounded like he’d gotten back to his feet. Riku had been a sore winner by not helping him up. “Let’s go again! I’ll beat you this time.”

“It’s getting late. Maybe tomorrow.” Maybe tomorrow he’d be able to lock himself down and wouldn’t have to worry about Sora noticing his reactions. 

“Riku’s right, we should get back.” 

Riku silently thanked Kairi for being the voice of reason, even as he headed toward the boats with long strides, more than aware that Sora and Kairi would have to jog to keep up with his longer steps if they wanted to.

“Meet back here for round two tomorrow!” Riku called over his shoulder. “I can make you eat sand again then.”

“You’re on!” At least Sora didn’t sound like he felt anything was amiss. Vaguely, dimly, Riku felt bad for leaning into Sora’s tendency toward obliviousness. If he was quicker on the uptake, more like… Well. 

Riku shook that thought off and dropped himself into his boat to row back, leaving Sora and Kairi to the one they’d come over in together. 

“Miss me?”

Their world wasn’t big, and after landing back on the main island Riku had been sure he was going to make it home without further incident. Had been hoping, because he kept having to adjust his pants on the way as he darted home, feelings from the spar refusing to leave even though it was over. He’d hoped to manage two days in a row without Vanitas showing up. Had even hoped, maybe, that his rejections had been enough, and that Vanitas would give up on appearing and tormenting him. That he would go back to Xehanort and lie in wait for the showdown to happen.

No such luck.

“What do you want?” he growled, refusing to turn and look behind him. His battle instincts hated leaving his back open to a foe, but Vanitas’s interest lay in places other than fighting Riku, and keeping his back to him seemed safer than the alternative. 

At least until the brush of disturbance in the air behind him, and the ripple of darkness that floated across his skin and suggested Vanitas had phased through the air. The feel of a presence right at his back that made the hair on Riku’s neck stand on end. His whole body tightened, nerves alight, anticipation rising in him. 

But Vanitas didn’t touch him, and Riku thought he was only six inches off his heels but didn’t dare turn around to see. He didn’t need to show that much interest—didn’t want to show that much interest. Still, the feeling of Vanitas crouched over him rushed through his body, bringing back the flush he’d only just barely managed to shake. And his darkness—Vanitas emitted darkness like Maleficent. Like Ansem. Like every villain he’d been taken in by and had to fight to get away from. Completely consumed by it, made from it, and Riku knew he was above that—dammit he’d fought so hard to get away from that—but apparently all it took was the darkness dressing up in a Sora-esque package to bring him right back.

“Riku,” Vanitas said in his ear.

A shudder ran down his spine. 

“You were watching me,” he said, feeling resigned more than accusatory.

Vanitas laughed, his voice low, seductive, the sound wrapping around Riku lower and lower like a rope encircling his body, binding him in place. 

“Of course. Did you think we were done?”

_ Yes _. Riku didn’t reply, and Vanitas laughed again.

“We left things so unfinished last time. It would have been so cruel to leave you hanging forever.” 

Riku grit his teeth, fighting against his body’s reactions to Vanitas purring in his ear. “You say that like you think I’m interested.”

Vanitas laughed again, a higher pitched cackle that had Riku looking around nervously, worried someone would overhear. It wasn’t that late yet. The sun might’ve been setting and providing some dark cover, but they were still outside, in the middle of town. And, yes, maybe the nearest houses were set back from the street, their lights dark, but that didn’t mean someone couldn’t come across them. 

“Playing hard to get looks good on you. Very entertaining.”

“I’m not…” The protest died on his tongue when Vanitas stepped forward, closed that distance between them and pressed his body against Riku’s rigid back. He was cold—or colder than he should have been, like maybe his darkness didn’t afford him the same body heat as a regular person—or maybe Riku was just running so hot right now that anyone would feel cool compared to the heat his body was giving off.

“Not… What?” 

“Not—” His protest broke into a muffled gasp when Vanitas’s hand came around him and ghosted along his thigh, so light he barely made an impression through the fabric of his shorts. 

“Hmm?” Vanitas hummed.

“Not playing hard to get,” Riku ground out.

Vanitas laughed again, and Riku could feel his chest jumping against his back with the sound. “You haven’t run away from me, yet, so I guess you’re not.” Vanitas’s hand landed back on his hip and stayed there.

That hadn’t been what he’d meant. Not at all. 

“What do you want?” Riku demanded. 

Vanitas snorted. “This again?” he asked, and Riku imagined he’d rolled his eyes by the impatience in his voice. “You’re supposed to be the smart one. Quick on the uptake. The _ Master _.” His tone suggested he thought Riku was doing about as good a job of that as Riku himself felt. That was... not a good job at all.

“Maybe I thought you’d be interested in something else by now,” Riku said. “Sora would’ve hopped interests already.” He sent a silent apology to his friend for the uncalled for slight. 

Vanitas snorted. “I think we’ve established that I’m not Sora,” he said. “You’ve said it yourself.” 

“Yet here you are, pretending to be him.”

A pause. Then, a cooed, “Aw, Riku. Do you want me to be nice?” in his Sora-voice. 

Yes, because Riku had no doubt he’d be a hell of a lot less interesting to Riku if he was. “Sure, why don’t you try it.”

Vanitas snickered, and stroked down Riku’s hip with the fingers of the hand resting there. “I’m offering you so much already. You’re so selfish.”

Riku scowled. Rolled his eyes. Knew he needed to stop talking because everything he said would only be thrown back in his face a moment later. Because everything he said was feeding into whatever game Vanitas was playing. 

“I think you just don’t know how. Being that steeped in the darkness pretty much guarantees you’re not nice company.” He managed to keep his tone even, like they were standing across from each other with a safe distance between them rather than Vanitas still pressed up against Riku’s back. 

“Maybe, but here I am willing to do something for you that _ Sora _ never would.” His fingers brushed Riku’s hip again, and he pressed closer, did something with his foot placement so that his hips were against the back of Riku’s thighs, and revealed that his motive might be deeper than just messing with Riku. He tried to make something of that, tried to work out how he could use that to his advantage, but his train of thought was wild and derailed when Vanitas’s hand slid up to his belt and then along it, around the front of his body. “And isn’t that better than running home and doing it yourself?” 

Vanitas’s voice was a low, raspy purr, his darkness embracing Riku, coaxing him like an estranged friend trying to welcome him back. He could’ve leaned into that darkness, but part of him still recoiled from it and that part allowed him to push it away. 

“You can’t have my heart,” he said. The darkness, he meant, but he supposed the implications cascaded down on more than one level where the complications of Vanitas interfering with his feelings for Sora were involved.

“We don’t really want it,” Vanitas said.

The statement was cold, should have given Riku pause, but as he said it Vanitas undid Riku’s belt, dropped his fly, and proved he was right. Even out in public where anyone could see, even if his Sora-sized hand was cooler than Sora ever was… this was a hell of a lot better than his hand in the shower at home. 

Fuck, but this was a whole lot better than being alone.


	4. Chapter 4

_ Day Five _

_ Two Days to the Graveyard _

Sleep refused to come to Riku that night. He tossed and turned instead, stared at the ceiling and tried to obsess over anything but Vanitas’s hands on him. 

He couldn’t close his eyes—every time he did the memory came back full force, and the backs of his eyelids filled with the image of the old bakery’s chimney, the fading light sapping the mess of ivy spread across the roof of its colour as they stood there. Vanitas pressed up against his back, one arm around Riku like he expected he’d try to fight him off, the other getting more aggressive when he didn’t. And that stupid chuckle, right below his ear, when Riku sagged when he finished and Vanitas knew he had won.

“Did you picture Sora?” he asked before Riku had recovered enough to pull away.

“No.”

Vanitas laughed; the sound, loud and cutting through the so-still night, sent a thrill through Riku that had him hurrying to pull away and fasten his pants, lest Vanitas attract the attention they’d been lucky enough to avoid so far. 

“Get out of here,” Riku spat.

Still laughing, Vanitas had left, and that should have been that.

Except that it wasn’t. 

Riku blinked his eyes open again, trying to force the memory from his mind with long deep breaths. He lay that way, still with the blanket half-thrown across his legs, until light started coming in through his bedroom window. 

Then he gave up entirely and headed out for the day. 

Alone on the beach, Riku opened a dark corridor to remind himself that he still could. Then he closed it again. 

Running away was neither an option, nor who he was… Not even if it seemed tempting. With a sigh, he tilted his head back to look up at the clouds. The part of his mind that hadn’t let him sleep the night before buzzed now, trying to convince him he was a bad person for doing what he’d done. Vanitas was the enemy—even if they’d never met before, even though they didn’t have any sort of history… Riku didn’t have any misconceptions about his alliances. The enemy, and one that oozed darkness like he spent his whole life steeped in it.

Darkness that should’ve been a turn-off—_ instantly _—to Riku, but that—

He grimaced and clenched his hands into tight fists, felt his fingernails cut into his palms as he tried to drive away the arousal rising in him again. The temptation. Dress it up in an attractive package and apparently it didn’t matter that Riku knew better. He couldn’t resist anyway. 

But it was once. Just once. Just once and no one ever had to find out. 

His cheeks burned in shame at the very thought. He wouldn’t have a year to work out an explanation to Sora for this one. Wouldn’t get some long grace period of his best friend in a magical sleep while he, Riku, tried to get his life back on track. 

But it didn’t matter because Sora wasn’t going to find out. Riku was _ done _ with Vanitas’s taunting, with his lurking, with his loitering around and waiting for Riku to show up just to ambush him alone. He clenched his fists, stared down at his boots, worked on collecting himself. He’d been weak. But he recognized it. And he could keep himself from giving into that weakness again. Focus on the task at hand, the days ahead.

Don’t get distracted.

An itch had started up under Riku’s skin. A familiar itch, one that in the past had said _ adventure _ but that now sounded alarm bells in his mind, reminded him of the last time he’d been tempted by darkness. Drawn in by it. He knew better now. Maybe he was jaded, maybe just tired, but he’d had more than enough of finding his own adventures. Making sure Sora stayed safe through his was adventure enough.

The consequences of Riku trying to find his own were just too great.

He groaned and scrubbed his hands across his face, set his shoulders and jaw and tried to shake off the melancholia. It was early still but eventually Sora was going to come looking for him—he’d suggested as much the day before when they’d sparred and Riku had begged off another round. He needed to get himself together before then, or even Sora would notice that something wasn’t right.

Riku shook his head, guilt at slighting Sora again, even if just to himself, rising in him. Vanitas had brought forward something ugly in him and now that it was awake he didn’t know how to quiet it down, shut it up, make it go away. That wasn’t who he was. Not anymore. And he wasn’t going to let some Sora lookalike make him back into someone he’d tried so hard to renounce.

Maybe he couldn’t control his feelings toward Sora. He definitely couldn’t control Sora’s feelings toward him. But he _ could _ control his reactions to Vanitas, and how much he let Vanitas get under his skin. More importantly, he could make sure to drive Vanitas out of their world entirely if he showed up again.

Yeah, that was the safest option. Given his reactions the night before, how easily he’d given into Vanitas’s touch, maybe that was the only option. Maybe he couldn’t trust himself to_ just say no _ if the possibility presented itself again.

Riku glanced around the beach, wishing for maybe the first time ever that their little world had a little more Heartless activity. He needed to hit something. Needed to focus on a fight—a real one, not a little spar with Sora—and lose himself in the rush of adrenaline that came with it. Needed a reminder now, when it mattered, that there was at least one thing that he was decent at, even if that thing was as small as getting rid of Soldiers and Darkballs. 

And… 

Something flashed through his peripheral vision and Riku turned, searching the ground and the edges of the shadows cast by the shady palm leaves above for any suspicious movement, or bulge of darkness that didn’t belong. Had he—?

But no, being able to summon the Heartless through a mere thought wasn’t an ability Riku had ever been dark enough to develop. 

A swish and high-pitched chittering broke through the quiet behind him and made Riku spin, Braveheart flashing into his hand mid-motion. He frowned at the three unfamiliar little blue creatures down the beach. Lithe, darting side-to-side by inches in jerky motions and spindly despite their short height, they reminded Riku more of the pale white Dusks that followed the Organization around than the pudgy round Heartless he’d been expecting. 

Not Shadows, and unlike any Heartless he’d ever seen, but he didn’t waste time wondering what they were beyond that. He leaped forward, dispatched each of them in a single swing. Grunted, irritated, when five more appeared staggered down the beach, but chased after them and eliminated them, too. 

Another appeared in their wake, this one acting differently than the rest. It was smarter, maybe, and dipped out of his range, flattening itself into the ground as soon as he neared. Riku hung back, treated it like a Shadow and waited for it to reemerge from the ground. He swung when it did but missed when the thing retreated right back into the ground and began sliding away, nothing more than a blue blob drifting along the sand.

Riku spun, scanning the beach for stragglers, then gave chase.

The creature led him off the sandy part of the beach and up, along the rocky trails that circled the edge of the island. The main village loomed high above here, hidden from view by the lofty canopies of the palms that arched up to his left, their trunks the only barrier between his path and the ocean below. Spray from the waves hitting the rocks misted over him, and Riku risked looking away from his prey long enough for a glance out at the sky, searching for signs of an incoming storm. 

But if there were any dark clouds out there, they were beyond the horizon, or lost from sight behind the curve of the island. 

He’d stopped walking and lingered far enough back from the creature that it surfaced again. They stared at each other for a moment: Riku, trying to time his lunge so that the thing wouldn’t get away again, and the creature jerking from side-to-side the same as its fellows had, waiting for Riku to make a move.

Riku stepped forward and swung but the creature proved itself faster and, maybe more importantly, uninterested in attacking Riku back, and faded down into the ground again. Riku scowled at it, then crouched down to wait it out. 

The creature half-surfaced, just the tips of its antennae poking up from the ground. Riku cast a small Thunder spell and, for a fraction of a moment, thought he’d caught the thing off guard and wiped it out. 

At least until the navy blob moved out from between a crevasse in the rock wall and continued on its way. 

After a quick rise the path dipped here and sloped rapidly downward, where it split at the inlet at the bottom into a sandbar that continued the route around the island at low tide, and a sharp jag into a shallow cave on the shore of the inlet.

They weren’t quite at low tide yet, so though the sandbar was visible below the surface it still had a couple of inches of water on it, and the creature darted to the side, into the cave, instead of crossing into the water. 

Riku paused outside the cave mouth and rolled his head to loosen up the tightening muscles in his neck. This was a trap, of course, it didn’t take much to realize that. The creature had acted differently than the others because it was leading Riku to this spot. He knew that, but squared his shoulders and stepped into the cave anyway. Trap or not, he couldn’t let a monster roam around unchecked on the island.

Keyblade held at the ready, Riku stood in the cave entrance and blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dimness after the bright sun outside. Somewhere deeper in the cave the creature chittered at him, a high-pitched nattering that sounded mocking, but was also far enough away that it didn’t seem to be lying in wait to ambush him. 

No, someone else was doing that instead.

“Aren’t you bored yet?” Riku asked. He kept Braveheart held in front of him, across his body, the blade forming a barrier between him and Vanitas. Unlike the tree house, Riku had enough room to move around in here. Enough room to fight Vanitas off if he didn’t turn around and leave right now.

Vanitas smirked and, as though Riku wasn’t armed at all, crossed the cave with casual steps and came to a stop right in front of him. His darkness radiated out, washed over Riku in slow, lapping waves, even though Vanitas didn’t seem to be doing anything at all to cause it. Behind him, two other creatures had joined the one that led him here. They darted back and forth, nattering all the while.

“What are those things?” Riku asked.

Keeping eye contact the entire time, Vanitas leaned in, laid his chest right against the flat of Braveheart’s blade and forced Riku to change his stance to support his weight so that Vanitas didn’t fall fully into him. Riku’s face burned at the proximity, the memory of the night before, and he fought to maintain that eye contact, his pride refusing to let him look away.

“Well?”

“They’re called Floods,” Vanitas said. His gaze shifted downward, breaking their eye contact. Riku’s attention followed down to where Vanitas walked two fingers along the edge of Braveheart, a hypnotic creeping crawl of two gloved digits. Vanitas snickered, the softest ‘_ kek _,’ and those fingers moved to creep up Riku’s chest instead. His touch was deliberate, intentional, almost painful, digits poking into his ribs and pressing in each spot, so Riku could feel each spot like a trail along his torso.

“Don’t you and Sora _ talk _ anymore?” 

Riku bit down on the inside of his cheek, swallowing his reaction, and waited for Vanitas to elaborate. If he’d learned anything about him, it was that Vanitas liked to hear himself talk. And that anything Riku said would just be ammo for him to turn right back around.

“Sora knows _ all _ about me, or at least these parts of me.” 

Vanitas’s fingers reached Riku’s lapel and stopped. Riku looked away from his hand, past him, and at the creatures again.

“Parts…? You mean…?”

“‘Parts?’” Vanitas repeated, mocking. “What, did you think they were Heartless you’d never seen before? God, you’re dumb.”

Riku scowled at him. Vanitas’s eyes glinted and he smirked. 

“The Unversed are part of me,” he said. “And those five you took out up on the beach? The ones you ‘protected’ your little village from?” He grabbed the edge of Riku’s lapel, twisted his hand in it and pulled, tugging Riku down closer to him.

Riku flinched, tried to jerk backward, but Vanitas’s grip was solid and kept him in place. 

“It _ hurt _ .” Vanitas flipped into his Sora voice and Riku closed his eyes, as though that would make it easier to bear than watching Vanitas while Sora’s voice came out of his mouth. “It’s like you don’t even _ like _ me anymore, Riku.”

As though closing his eyes and hearing the pitch-perfect impression wasn’t _ so much worse _ than looking at the impostor when he spoke. 

Vanitas shoved him away and Riku staggered, eyes flying open, balance more off-kilter for having been blind to the beginning of the movement. 

“I _ don’t _ like you,” Riku said, forcing his mind to push past Sora’s voice in his ears, reminding himself over and over and over that he _ wasn’t _ talking to Sora. 

“Don’t you?” Vanitas asked. Riku stared at him, glad of the distance between them again. “_ You’re _ the one with the Keyblade out, but you haven’t even swung it at me once. You haven’t told your _ precious _ Sora that I’m here. And…” he smirked. “You sure seemed to like me when I got you off.”

Riku swallowed—hard—and didn’t deny it. The mere mention, the tone in Vanitas’s voice… He reacted again, body betraying the truth in Vanitas’s words and Riku’s desire for a round two. No one knew about the first time. Maybe a second wouldn’t hurt.

Vanitas stepped closer again, flanked by his Floods. Riku glanced at them, a flicker to make sure they weren’t about to rush him. Vanitas bared his teeth in a snarl and cut his hand in a sharp motion to the side. The Floods’ chattering increased and their bodies jerked, their noises turning anxious and rising to a high, rapid crescendo before they tore in two and faded.

With narrow eyes at the unnecessary display, Riku slid his attention back to Vanitas.

“They were distracting you,” he said. If they had, well, they hadn’t been nearly as distracting as Vanitas was now. He had a hand spread across his chest, fingers pointed downward, and as Riku watched, started sliding that hand lower.

In that tight bodysuit, without looking at Vanitas’s face, without hearing him speak, he looked like Sora again—Sora gone over to the Darkness, maybe, but Sora all the same. And Riku was entranced by the way that gloved hand moved across the veins of the suit, down across the raised, exaggerated abs.

Where had Vanitas come from? Did his body look like Sora’s?

Vanitas’s hand stopped cupped over his belt buckle with his fingers pointing still downward, so Riku’s attention had no choice but to follow and look.

Was he _ entirely _ identical to Sora? 

He jerked his gaze back to Vanitas’s face, found his lips curled up, his expression satisfied. “Put the Keyblade down, Riku,” he said. “And I’ll let you touch.”

Between the discomfort in his pants and the invitation in Vanitas’s gestures, Riku had forgotten he was even holding Braveheart. He dismissed it without a thought, and took two near-staggering steps closer to Vanitas, attention so locked on that hand that he nearly tripped across the uneven cave floor.

Vanitas snapped the fingers of his other hand in Riku’s vision and Riku looked up.

“One condition,” he said. 

“What?” Riku asked, his voice raspy and mouth dry. He swallowed hard, cleared his throat, asked again, “What do you want?” His attention dropped back down, below Vanitas’s hand, to the crossed belts on his lower body and then down further, to where Vanitas’s suit was too tight to hide that he was just as impatient as Riku for this game to be over. 

“You can’t think of Sora today, either.”

When Riku hesitated, trying to come up with a reply to that but finding it hard to think, Vanitas continued, “Or you never get to touch.”

Riku had his fist clenched so tightly that his nails dug into his palm. Barely three feet separated him and Vanitas, and he thought he might promise anything to close that distance right now. Vanitas wasn’t asking much. That was what the warmth in his stomach said.

“Whatever. Fine.”

Vanitas smirked, and then both hands were on his belts, undoing them, and gesturing Riku forward. 

“Then you can touch.”

When he went to his knees, and the roughness of the cave floor cut into his skin and Vanitas’s penis brushed against his cheek, it wasn’t hard not to think of Sora.

Vanitas was long gone by the time Riku pushed himself to his feet again, his breathing and feet still uneasy, pants damp in spots from where he’d shown a lack of care rubbing himself after Vanitas had got his and left.

He scrubbed the back of his hand along a spot where the skin pulled on his chin, then wiped it along his lapel against his shoulder. Tugged his clothes back into place. Squared his shoulders. Stepped back out into the sunlight—

—and nearly walked right into someone, grabbing them around the waist to catch both their balances so they didn’t go tumbling into the inlet together.

Riku’s face burned at how close he’d come to being caught. And then harder still when he realized who had caught him. 

“Riku?”

“K-Kairi!”

He leaped backward, let her go, and prayed that she’d think the damp spots on his clothes were sea water if she looked to close. Had she seen? Did she know? How long had she been here? The cave mouth was wide; he’d probably been visible from the entrance. 

She stood on her toes to look past him, into the cave. “What’re you doing down here all by yourself?”

She was alone, too, and he turned it back around on her. “Yeah? How’s that different from you?” His heart was in his mouth, and his words came out with an unintended bite. 

She raised a cool eyebrow at him, held up her hands and waved him off. He _ saw _ the moment her eyes trailed down his shirt. He didn’t follow her gaze, but his shoulders tightened and he prayed he hadn’t missed a spot he could’ve tried to clean.

“Don’t tell me if you don’t want to,” she said. “I just came down here to get something Sora left in the cave yesterday.” She nodded at it, then slipped past him as his face blazed hotter. “He’s looking for you, by the way. You should answer your phone.”

He fumbled it out of his pocket, trying not to focus on Kairi’s all-but admitting that she and Sora had been sneaking off to _ this _ particular cave. 

Two missed calls from Sora. He hadn’t even heard it ring. 

He turned back to look for Kairi, but she’d passed out of eyesight, and he was too mortified to chase her down—especially if Sora might be coming down this way looking for the both of them, and no doubt his attention span alone wouldn’t last long at all.

Tide had lowered while he’d been in the cave and Riku darted down onto the sandbar, glanced down at his shirt as he went… and tried not to think about what Sora and she got up to in that cave, or—and maybe worse—wonder if it was possible he’d transferred anything onto Kairi’s clothes when they’d bumped. 

His face burned, his eyes burned, and Riku broke into a run.


	5. Chapter 5

_The Day Before the Graveyard_

Tomorrow.

_Tomorrow_.

“What d’you think it’s gonna be like?”

He, Sora and Kairi sat in a row on the dock on the play island, looking back across the water to the village. Sora and Kairi held hands and Riku tried to ignore it, hid deep inside his thoughts and his own worries about the day to come.

“Tomorrow?” Sora added, like they needed the clarification. Like the word hadn’t been repeating in Riku’s own mind over and over since he’d awoken this morning.

“We’ll be fine,” Riku said. He focused on the play of light on the water, the way the sunlight sparkled across the waves, the ebb and flow of the tide utterly indifferent to their conflicts. Did the ocean know the world had fallen to darkness? Did the ocean remember?

“Of course!” Sora laughed, threw his arm around Riku and leaned into him.

Riku froze, held his breath, felt his heart rate speed up. Sora was so _warm_. So warm and real and solid, forcing Riku to hold him up against the force of his own affection lest they both tumble off the edge of the dock and into the ocean.

Warm and real and solid in a way that Vanitas, full of darkness, cold to the touch, never felt.

Riku took a shallow breath in through his nose and pressed his shoulder back into Sora, pushed back until he was upright under his own weight again. He shouldn’t… He couldn’t…

When Sora had come to get him that morning, shortly after breakfast, he’d grabbed Riku by the wrist and not given Riku any choice _but_ to come along with him and Kairi down to the dock, like he thought that Riku might object if he asked instead of assuming. Like _Riku_ had been the one making sure the three of them didn’t spend much time together this week.

Kairi had looked amused, hadn’t once mentioned running into Riku down by the cave the previous day, had yet to suggest she suspected he’d been spending his time doing anything out of the ordinary. Didn’t look bothered at all that Riku’s presence would be infringing on her last full, conflict-free day with Sora.

“It’ll be cool, won’t it?” Sora asked. He sat upright again, no longer leaning into Riku.

Riku missed the warmth. Still sat ramrod straight. Couldn’t bring himself to relax, more hyper aware than before of how close Sora sat to him. Imagined he could feel Sora’s heat radiating out and making Riku’s body burn up.

“I’m not sure that’s the right word,” Kairi said.

“Fighting with everyone, I mean,” Sora said. “All of us together, against the Organization.”

“It’s not going to be easy,” Riku said. Sora didn’t sound scared. Not at all. But Riku? Riku was terrified.

“We can take ‘em,” Sora said, voice still light.

Riku gave him a sceptical look, then let out a light laugh. Looked back out over the water.

“Yeah,” he said softly.

Today was a pure rest day, not a training day, and it left Riku feeling even more at odds than he had been. It should have been easy to sit and spend time doing nothing at all with Sora and Kairi, but something between them felt strained. The ease they’d had as kids was gone, and maybe that was normal, to be expected, since they weren’t kids anymore. Since they’d been through so much.

“Hey, Riku?”

Sora had declared he wanted a snack and wandered off to look for coconuts on the other side of the play island, leaving Riku and Kairi alone for the moment. They hadn’t spoken: Riku, too busy thinking about the close call in the cave, Kairi… Well, he couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but she’d wandered over to the waterfall to get a drink from the spring. Then come back to stand over him expectantly, her hands on her hips and a concerned, but vaguely impatient, expression on her face.

“Yeah?”

Kairi dropped back down to sit next to him.

“I’m sorry.”

He frowned at her, turned to try and scrutinize her profile as she looked out over the water. “Huh? For what?”

She gave him a wistful look, reached down and grabbed his hand and weaved her fingers through his. “Sora,” she said.

Utterly powerless to stop it, Riku’s cheeked blazed red. He wished he could drop off into the ocean and have the current swallow him up. “I-I— W-what d’you mean?” Riku’s heart leaped into his throat and he could barely breathe, never mind speak. He stared at her, eyes wide, blind white panic screaming through his head, his stomach clenching painfully. _What had she seen?_

She patted the top of his hand, squeezed it between both of hers and then let go and went back to staring out over the water. “I’m not going to make you talk about it if you don’t want to, but I just wanted to…” she shook her head. “I don’t know. Tell you that you don’t have to be all alone all the time. Sora knows you’re looking out for him, you know? He’s looking out for you, too.”

The panic quieted a little, but not enough for Riku to do anything other than continue to stare at her, eyes too wide and wild. She patted his knee and stood back up with a smile. “I’m going to go find Sora.”

He let her go, knotted his hands together and squeezed, watched her as she walked away. The lump in his throat had slid back down into his chest, but all that did was move the ache. His heart ached. Ached, and still beat far too fast, so fast he thought it might try and burst out through his ribcage since it hadn’t had any success rising up and out of his mouth.

_Tomorrow_.

Riku needed to focus. He had to get his head back on straight or he would be useless to them in the big fight. Kairi couldn’t have picked a worse time to try and have a heart-to-heart. Maybe she wasn’t so convinced they were all going to come away in one piece. Maybe she only wanted to tell Riku that she saw him, no ulterior motives. To try and recognize his feelings since they both knew Sora never could.

Riku shook his head, squeezed his hands into fists.

Sora had wanted to spend the day together. He’d been eager to spend time with Riku and Kairi together and trying to make sure that Riku knew he wanted to include him. He’d been clear about that, couldn’t have been clearer. But Riku… Riku needed space. Space, and maybe one other—

He stamped down on the thought before he could fully think it. Just space. Kairi had said he didn’t have to be alone all the time, and maybe, just maybe one day that would be true. But it wasn’t now. Wouldn’t be, for the foreseeable future. Right now, the only thing Riku wanted, the thing he wanted more than anything else, was to be by himself. To dissect his feelings. 

The three of them had come out to the island on a single boat again, but it was the middle of the afternoon this time and the play island really wasn’t that far out from the main island. Riku glanced over his shoulder, off to where Sora and Kairi had gone to collect coconuts, checking to make sure that they weren’t on their way back.

The beach was empty. Something sunk a little in Riku’s chest, a sense of disappointment, maybe, that neither of them were going to show up to stop him, but Riku squashed it down. He wanted this. 

He looked out at the opposite shore, and dove off the dock and into the water with a smooth arc. It wasn’t that far to swim.

He felt stupid, like a coward, halfway through the swim. By the time he’d finished it, he regretted being brash, but he also didn’t have any desire to cross back to the other island, by boat or otherwise. He fished his Gummiphone from his pocket and—still amazed at the resilience of the technology—typed a quick message to Kairi to let her know he was okay and to pass the message on to Sora.

He didn’t acknowledge the reason he’d taken off, and she didn’t reply to ask.

Sora had hugged him a thousand times, but even so Riku was caught up in _this_ hug. His reaction to it. Completely freezing up, afraid to lean into the affection in case Sora noticed something was wrong. He could still feel Sora’s arm around him, the brief pressure on his shoulder where Sora’s head had leaned against it, his weight against Riku’s side.

And the screaming awareness that he’d immediately compared Sora’s touch to Vanitas’s.

It was wrong. _Demented_. What did it say about him that his mind had immediately gone there? That he’d thought about Vanitas _at all_ while sitting with Sora and Kairi? That he could be so surrounded by the love and light of his friends and want to dwell on the darkness?

Riku groaned, put his head in his hands, tugged at clumps of wet hair mussed from his swim. He’d spent the last three days bored out of his mind—lonely—wanting to be with Sora and Kairi while they still had the chance, and now that he’d gotten it… Now that Sora had insisted he be there with them instead of going off on their own, he’d screwed it up.

Worse. _Worse_ was the little voice in the back of his head that reminded him he didn’t think much about Sora at all when he touched Vanitas, or Vanitas touched him. The louder one overtaking that voice that said it was likely Vanitas still lurked on the islands somewhere, lying in wait for Riku to stumble across him, or waiting to ambush him when Riku least expected it.

Destiny Island wasn’t very big, and the village just a speck on the archipelago. If Vanitas was here, Riku would find him.

Itching for a fight, he took off down the beach at a run.

Riku checked the cave first, struck out, and started wending around the trails on the island looking in nooks and dips and crannies, behind trees and under rocks, trying to find Vanitas or any sign of his presence. After fifteen minutes he started feeling a bit silly about it—maybe Xehanort had reined him in, had him preparing for the day to come, too.

Maybe he just wasn’t as interested in Riku as Riku was in him.

After twenty minutes, Riku’s phone started ringing. He ignored it, but the person called back once and then again, forcing Riku to finally pull it from his pocket or be subject indefinitely to its relentless ringing.

_Sora_.

His finger hovered over the ignore button, but Riku let the call finish ringing, then powered the phone off before Sora could call back again. He shoved the phone back at his pocket before he could think too hard about what he’d done, fumbled the motion and missed. Watched the phone smack against a rock, face down, when it landed on the path. Hand shaking, he bent down and picked the phone back up.

_Sora_, he thought, staring down at the blank screen, idly turning it side-to-side to check for cracks. Imagining it coming to life and giving him another chance to answer it, even though that was impossible. 

Riku scowled and put the phone away, careful to secure it in his pocket this time. He clenched his fists and stared down at the toes of his boots. Took a couple of sharp breaths and let his emotions flow through him. His body was tight with anger—at himself, for his strange attraction to Vanitas, at Vanitas for disrupting their last days of peace, at the dread and fear in the back of his mind that he was wasting away his last chance to spend time with Sora.

That he was making the choice to be here, away from Sora.

Riku took a deep breath. Then another. Then, face twisted into a scowl, looked up and shouted to the sky, “I know you’re out there! Vanitas!”

No response, and Riku felt a little bit of a sinking in his chest. He kept walking.

Giving up and accepting that Vanitas had had his fun and moved on would probably have been to Riku’s benefit. He should go back to the play island, back to Sora and Kairi, back to his _friends_ no matter how painful it might be to be near them right now, no matter how awkward it was to look at Sora. No matter how awkward it would be to look Kairi in the eye when she _knew_.

He should go back. He should—

A dark corridor opened on the path ahead of him and Riku hesitated, fell back on his heel mid-step while he waited to see who emerged from it, even though he knew almost beyond a shadow of a doubt who was paying him a visit. Still, he tensed when the masked figure stepped from it, garbed in an Organization coat. The coat was new. The mask sure wasn’t.

No one ever said tenacity didn’t pay off.

“Vanitas!”

The mask inclined to regard him, then melted away, helmet along with it. Riku didn’t stop walking until he was five feet from him, meeting that smirk with a glare.

“You’re so easy, you know that? It’s boring.”

Riku scowled at him. “And you’re predictable,” he said. “I knew you’d be back.”

“You sounded so desperate, shouting my name. I had to come look. It would’ve been rude if I didn’t.”

Desperate? He’d been going for aggressive. Maybe they were the same thing. Maybe it didn’t matter right now.

No, it definitely didn’t matter right now.

“Whatever,” Riku said.

Vanitas looked at him through narrowed eyes, his expression contemplative. He didn’t step forward. Didn’t make any move to infringe on Riku’s personal space, didn’t get right up close and personal the way he had in their previous encounters.

The lack of interest stung, felt like rejection, and Riku tried not to dwell on his confused heart’s about-face. If he felt rejected by Vanitas, that meant that somewhere deep down, he actually wanted the attention. _Liked_ being so close to Vanitas’s darkness.

A moth to flame.

Riku took another step forward, just a step, barely a foot.

Vanitas stepped back. “What are you _doing_?” he asked. He sounded disgusted, wrinkled his nose, and waved a hand as though to push Riku away.

Riku hesitated, taken aback for a moment. What was he…? He stepped forward again, only for Vanitas to again move back and keep the distance between them.

“What’s your deal?” Riku demanded.

Vanitas smirked, leaned back and crossed his arms. “My deal? You’re throwing yourself at me. Who do I look like to you?”

“I know exactly who you are.” He hated it, hated that he was here, hated that he was even entertaining… Whatever the hell he was doing, but he did. He knew who Vanitas was. And he knew who Vanitas wasn’t. And he knew that as long as he was focused on Vanitas, he wasn’t worried about Sora.

Vanitas’s smirk grew and he laughed aloud.

“Yeah?” he asked. “And what do you want?”

Riku faltered, and he stared at Vanitas, scrambling to find an answer to that question that wouldn’t make him sound every bit as desperate as Vanitas had accused him of being.

Vanitas didn’t budge in the silence. He stood there with his smirk morphed into a grin, looking as though he enjoyed every single moment of Riku’s stymied stare.

Then he yawned. “If that’s it, I’m leaving.”

He opened a corridor behind him, turned on the spot. Panic that his only distraction was about to leave flared in Riku’s mind.

“No,” he said. The word crossed his lips in a rasp. 

Vanitas paused. “What was that? I didn’t quiiite hear it.” He dragged out the vowels, didn’t turn back.

Riku swallowed. “No,” he said again, poured every bit of his cultivated false confidence into it. “You’re not.”

Vanitas made a soft, amused noise.

Riku took a step forward, then another. “Where’s that corridor go?” he demanded.

That made Vanitas laugh, and he turned enough for Riku to see his profile and that expression that knew he had Riku right where he wanted him. “Wherever you want.”  
  


They ended up back in the cave. Sora and Kairi’s cave. Riku tried not to think about it much beyond that as he dropped his jacket, his belt, his shoes.

“Shirt,” Vanitas drawled. He’d lost the coat, revealed the suit with its tattered skirt underneath. He stood behind Riku, out of his line of sight, looking at him in his sagging pants.

Riku hesitated over pulling the white t-shirt over his head. He knew what was coming, could already hear Vanitas’s gleeful reaction to the mark hiding under the fabric. Internally debated the merits of just turning around.

“What are you, shy?”

Riku scowled and pulled off his shirt.

It took a moment longer than Riku thought it would, but Vanitas’s laughter came as he’d expected. Maybe it had taken him a moment to realize what he was looking at. Riku twisted his shirt in his hands, then dropped it on top of the pile of clothes starting to form next to his feet.

“You’re so pathetic,” Vanitas said. Riku flinched when one gloved finger touched the centre of his back, then started moving upward, tracing the scar there. He hadn’t realized Vanitas had moved close enough to touch.

He stood rigid, hating that Vanitas was touching the scar but not wanting to move away. Played the game of chicken, because he’d known exactly how interested in the Dream Eater emblem Vanitas would be when he revealed it. He wouldn’t be the one to pull away first.

“Does he know?” Vanitas asked.

“No.” Riku’s teeth ground together, lips barely parting enough to get the word out.

“Sora’s knight in shining armour,” Vanitas drawled, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. “Risking darkness and taking on disfigurement for a boy that will _never_ love you back.”

“Shut up,” Riku growled. He spun, grabbed Vanitas by the arm and pushed him back until his back was against the wall of the cave. Vanitas looked surprised, briefly, to have been overpowered, but his eyes glinted and the edge of his mouth curled up, pleased.

“Then entertain me,” Vanitas said. Riku put his hands on either side of Vanitas’s head, supported his weight on them against the rock wall, and leaned down over him. Vanitas snickered. “Finally coming out to play, Riku?” 

“Take off the suit,” Riku said. 

Another soft snicker, but Vanitas didn’t move to obey, just looked up at him with those glinting gold eyes. 

“You’re all talk,” he challenged. “Too scared to actually do anything. Can’t tell me to leave. Can’t tell Sora you _love_ him. Can’t even fuck me to get something for yourself. You’re pathetic.”

Riku glared at him, grabbed his arm and spun him to slam against the wall. Pressed up against his back, feeling the veins of the suit rough against his bare chest, and Vanitas’s slimness beneath it.

“Then I’ll take it off for you,” he said. He scraped his knuckles on the rock wall, a zing of pain shooting through him, when he reached around to find where the belts crossed on the front of Vanitas’s suit. 

Vanitas dropped his head back, his hair coarse and spikes crushing against Riku’s neck, and looked up at Riku upside down. “I win,” he breathed.

Riku released one of the belt buckles by feel, and pretended he didn’t care.

“I take it back,” Vanitas said, looking Riku up and down from the mouth of the cave. He had a dark corridor open, its dome blocking out the sun and darkening down the cave. He’d pulled his suit back on, his coat back on, hidden his scuffed knees, roughed up skin, in a way that Riku couldn’t cover as well with his short-sleeved jacket and three-quarter pants. 

The air outside of the cave was still, the corridor not helping, and the smell of their fucking hung in the damp enclosure of the cave. Riku tried not to wrinkle his nose, tried not to figure out how much of it came from him while Vanitas was still there, staring him down.

Vanitas smirked, like he knew what Riku was thinking anyway, and turned and left with a simple parting shot.

“Your armour’s pretty tarnished.” 


	6. Epilogue

_ The Graveyard _

Sora was gone.

Sora was gone and Riku…

Well.

The battle, the day’s events, hadn’t sunk in yet. He shuffled after the group anyway, headed back to the Gummi, staring at his feet, the sky, the backs of the others, trying not to dwell. 

Sora was gone.

The graveyard had felt like a dead place when they landed. Dead, like the battle that had been fought on its soil so long ago had sapped it of all its energy. Dead, like the wielders who had once stood here had lived in symbiosis with the heart of the world and when their hearts had been extinguished, so too had its own. 

Dead, like the Keyblades petrified into the ground, sentinels of their lost world. Disconnected from the long lost hearts of their wielders, but guarding and warning off those who would come after. 

At least, that was the only way Riku had been able to explain away the overwhelming feeling of dread that washed over him the moment their feet touched the ground. Sora hadn’t noticed. He seemed happy, even, or at least relieved, and Riku couldn’t help but feel that something had transpired between him and Kairi—changed, since they’d left Destiny Islands. But what that was, he couldn’t quite put his finger on. 

Everyone else was too focused on the upcoming battle to notice anything out of the ordinary at all—not only about Sora, but also about Riku himself, and that was a relief. And eventually, after they’d traversed the Badlands, been saved by Terra and then by those very same dead keys—driven by Sora after he’d disappeared into the Demon Tide’s centre and Riku’s heart had plunged to his feet—Riku, too, had refocused.

After all that, the deja vu, the sense that he was forgetting something, and his sense of dread, all vanished. Too much was at stake for him to be anything but focused on the matter at hand.

That focus had pulled him through until he’d come face-to-face with Vanitas again.

He’d known it would happen. Known he couldn’t get through this whole day without encountering the mask. Even still, Vanitas hadn’t sought him out, and when Riku, in pursuit of Ansem, had turned the corner in the labyrinth and run into Aqua and Ven, it had been completely by chance.

They didn’t notice his approach, too caught up in their fight with Vanitas and——Terra, and Riku hung back, caught in awe by the, well,  _ mastery _ of the Keyblade battle in front of him. He’d seen Aqua fight, had even—nearly—fought her, but that had been an exhausted, taken-by-darkness Aqua. Rested Aqua, Aqua who had had a week off to get some of her energy back, was a font of power and skill the likes of which Riku had never seen.  _ He  _ certainly couldn’t compare.

Riku didn’t want to get involved, didn’t want to interfere with  _ their _ battle, couldn’t just charge in there, so he hung back—

Until Vanitas—masked again, hiding his Sora-ness—noticed him and redirected his onslaught. 

“Riku!” Ven and Aqua called, their voices bracketing him distantly. 

Riku couldn’t react. Couldn’t even acknowledge them. He stood, frozen, staring at Vanitas head-on, trying to process the  _ thing  _ charging at him. 

Because Vanitas… Vanitas was supported in the air by a battery of Keyblades. He stood atop a burst of them, the rest trailing behind him like the tail of a comet, and he looked just like Sora had, facing down the Demon Tide.

“Riku!” 

Aqua’s voice broke through as the first Keyblade hit him. A volley of shots followed, lifted him into the air and threw him backward. He slammed against the stone wall behind him and, winded, slid to his stomach in the dust. He groaned, rolled over, could hear Vanitas’s cackling over top the renewed sound of Keyblade-meeting-Keyblade.

_ Get up, get up. _

Still on his back, staring up at the darkening sky and unable to get enough breath in his lungs to sit up yet, Riku reached out for Braveheart, skimmed his hand along the ground searching for its hilt. 

“Pathetic.” The voice was close, but not close enough for him to see Vanitas from where he lay, and Riku groaned. Ven and Aqua had to still be fighting Terra. That left Vanitas all to him. That meant he had to  _ get. Up. _

Braveheart came to his hand and Riku took as deep a breath as he could and pushed to his feet. 

Vanitas had lost his ride, and he stood a step out of Riku’s easy reach, still laughing. His Keyblade hummed with energy, like he had a spell prepared in it, ready to fire, and Riku warily raised Braveheart in response, prepared himself to throw up a barrier spell as soon as Vanitas even twitched.

The mask gave Vanitas an advantage, stopped him from telegraphing his motions with a glance, or with his expression. Riku glanced down at his feet instead, lucked out when Vanitas shifted his toe just slightly an instant before he leaped forward.

Vanitas’s fireball ricocheted off Riku’s reflect, sending the mask recoiling from the blow back. Riku launched himself forward, through the still charred, hot air of the recoil, and struck out with a swing. 

Vanitas parried. Riku swung again. And Ven and Aqua’s fight disappeared from his awareness as the world narrowed down to just him and Vanitas. Their Keyblades clashed, and for a bit Riku thought they were evenly matched. 

Then he started flagging, Vanitas getting the advantage with two carefully placed swings and a blast of darkness, and Riku reconsidered that position.

“Riku!” Ven’s healing spell washed over him a moment before his Keyblade whipped past and knocked Vanitas across the back of the head. He spun to face Ven, then took off after him, leaving Riku a moment to catch his breath.

In a glance Riku took in Aqua, still holding her own, and Ven and Vanitas slashing and parrying and slashing again some distance from them.

Riku threw a spell to aid Aqua a moment before she brought her Keyblade down across Terra’s head and slammed him to the ground.

He didn’t get up again.

Riku watched Aqua run to him, then Ven turn to follow the moment he’d realized what happened. Riku ran forward to intercept Vanitas when he spun to give chase. 

“I’ve got this, go!”

Vanitas heard him, redirected his attack, and didn’t give Riku a chance to see where Ven went before he had to parry again.

“ _ Do you _ ?” Vanitas asked. “Do you really  _ have this _ ?”

Riku grunted, pushed his blade back against Vanitas’s and leaped backward to give himself space from him for another swing. 

“You’re not better than me!”

Riku threw a spell, fire wrapped in darkness. It blasted from him with such force that his feet slid across the loose rubble of the desert beneath his feet.

It slammed into Vanitas’s helmet with a  _ crack,  _ and when it dispelled the mask fell away with it. That face. Those eyes. Flashbacks, the week, everything he’d done, rushed through Riku’s mind. His feet anchored to the ground. Frozen. Vulnerable.

Vanitas smirked. “Aren’t I?”

The voice snapped Riku back to himself. 

_ Not Sora _ .

“No.”

His final blow knocked Vanitas to his knees. 

Vanitas laughed, even as dark tendrils started lifting off of him and the edges of his body went fuzzy, as though all he was made of was darkness—as though all any of the real Organization XIII was made of was darkness—and it was calling him home.

“Maybe not,” Vanitas said, and looked past Riku a moment before lowering his voice. “But I’m  _ still  _ as close to Sora as you’re  _ ever _ going to get. Don’t forget it.”

He vanished before Riku could give voice to the retort on his tongue, and Riku stood, staring at that spot. Dazed.

_ That’s okay. Isn’t it? _

Sora was gone. And Vanitas was, too. And loath as Riku was to admit it, even to himself—especially to himself—Vanitas had become some sort of twisted placeholder for Sora. Even though he’d known it could never be a  _ thing,  _ even though he had never  _ wanted _ Vanitas that way, even though revulsion still washed through him every time the memories started to surface.

Despite all that, it churned Riku’s stomach to know that he’d struck the killing blow.  _ Not Sora _ . But maybe if he’d been with Sora, or Kairi, instead of fighting Vanitas, he’d have been able to change something. Maybe Sora and Kairi both would still be here now.

“Riku?” 

Riku jumped, turned to look at Mickey.

“You okay?”

“I…” he hesitated. Then, maybe too quickly, nodded. “He needs to do this,” he said. “Sora. And if he doesn’t come home with her... Well, then I’ll go save the both of them.”

Mickey smiled at him, but it was a shallow, hesitant smile. A smile that said he knew more than Riku was letting on, that reminded Riku that he’d stood by and supported him when Riku had found himself after Ansem. A smile that knew this Riku, post-Ansem Riku, far better than Sora or Kairi did.

“Somethin’ else wrong?” Mickey asked. Mickey, who had begged Sora to stay.

And there in the Keyblade Graveyard, surrounded by ghosts of thousands of fallen Keyblade wielders, Riku thought about telling him. Could feel the words on the tip of his tongue, along with the retort he hadn’t been able to throw back at Vanitas. Here, he could shout it all out—the pain, the loss, the longing, the heartache—and the red rocks wouldn’t react. Would just absorb his words, his pain, the very same way they’d absorbed so much pain centuries before.

But Mickey wasn’t these rocks. Mickey wouldn’t absorb his words and take them away forever.

Mickey couldn’t know. Not anymore than he’d already worked out on his own.

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

But he looked to the sky, to the point above where Kingdom Hearts had opened, where Sora’s keyhole portal had taken them to Scala ad Caelum. Imagined he could see it there. Could see Sora—his Sora—smiling at him, out through the Keyhole. Smiling down from wherever he was. 

_ May my heart be my guiding key. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _And while you're outside looking in  
Describing what you see  
Remember what you're staring at is me_
> 
> A note on the epilogue: I’m not wholly convinced that anyone but Sora (and _maybe_ Kairi) remembers the events of the failed Keyblade graveyard segment. This epilogue reflects that, with Riku’s vague sense of deja vu his heart remembering the sacrifice that his mind doesn’t. The story rejoins canon as soon as Vanitas is vanquished.
> 
>   
Thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to my betas for all their feedback and letting me bounce things off them for the many months I've been writing this. You know who you are.


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